Microfluidic approaches offer several benefits over their standard molecular biology counterparts. The most obvious benefit is decreased sample volume (which results in decreased waste volume), but microfluidic approaches are also economical in the long run. Perhaps even more importantly, miniaturization can result in dramatically increased performance. Microfluidic technologies are highly amenable to automation and offer the potential for the massive, parallel processing of laboratory procedures.
Fluid movement through the tiny vessels of microfluidics devices is fundamentally different from that through their familiar, larger counterparts. Thus, microfluidics researchers must devise ways to exploit the properties that are desirable in a given context, and to circumvent those that are not. For example, fluid flow in microfluidic channels is laminar rather than turbulent; multiple flow streams run side by side, with mixing mediated only by diffusion. This general feature is advantageous in some, but not all, cases, so some designers make adaptations such ...
